3D video systems garner great interest for enhancing a consumer's experience, whether at the cinema or in the home. These systems use stereoscopic or autostereoscopic methods of presentation, including:
(i) anaglyph—provides left/right eye separation by filtering the light through a two color filter, commonly red for one eye, and cyan for the other eye;
(ii) linear polarization—provides separation at the projector by filtering the left eye through a linear polarizer (commonly) oriented vertically, and filtering the right eye image through a linear polarizer oriented horizontally;
(iii) circular polarization—provides separation at the projector by filtering the left eye image through a (commonly) left handed circular polarizer, and filtering the right eye image through a right handed circular polarizer;
(iv) shutter glasses—provides separation by multiplexing the left and right images in time, and
(v) spectral separation—provides separation at the projector by filtering the left and right eye spectrally where the left and right eye each receives a complementary portion of the red, green, and blue spectrums.
Unfortunately, these systems employ stereoscopic image pairs with poor dynamic range that result in a pedestrian illusion of depth—noticeably lacking true realism. Dynamic range (DR) is a range of intensity (e.g., luminance, luma) in an image, e.g., from darkest darks to brightest brights. These stereoscopic image pairs are characterized by approximately three orders of magnitude of dynamic range (e.g., standard dynamic range, SDR), corresponding to the limited rendering capabilities of conventional televisions and computer monitors. This is a humble presentation for some 14 to 15 orders of magnitude of dynamic range (e.g., high dynamic range, HDR) perceptible to a human visual system (with adaptation), or even the 5 to 6 orders of magnitude simultaneously perceptible (e.g., VDR).
Simply increasing dynamic range is often not feasible with bandwidth and storage limitations, particularly for 3D content. A 3D stereoscopic video, with twice the images (e.g., left and right eye perspective images), may already require double the bandwidth and storage over a two-dimensional (2D) video. As appreciated by the inventors here, improved techniques for 3D image processing, given practical bandwidth and storage requirements, are desirable for a superior immersive experience. It is further appreciated that these improved techniques preferably are backwards compatible with single-view SDR systems, single-view VDR systems, and 3D SDR systems.
The approaches described in this section are approaches that could be pursued, but not necessarily approaches that have been previously conceived or pursued. Therefore, unless otherwise indicated, it should not be assumed that any of the approaches described in this section qualify as prior art merely by virtue of their inclusion in this section. Similarly, issues identified with respect to one or more approaches should not assume to have been recognized in any prior art on the basis of this section, unless otherwise indicated.